Centered Right

Something odd is happening in Scandinavian politics. Or rather, something normal has stopped happening. Everybody knows that for the better part of a century, social democrats have been building Keynesian welfare states in Scandinavia. The news is that economic liberals ("liberals" in the classical, continental sense of the term) have basically ceased to attack them. In fact, Scandinavia's center-right parties now actively embrace the welfare state. And suddenly -- and not coincidentally -- voters like them.

For generations, political power in Scandinavia has rested overwhelmingly with the labor-oriented social democrats, interrupted only by brief periods of center-right government. But last week, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who took office in 2001, achieved the status of longest-sitting prime minister ever from Venstre, the traditionally economically liberal party of Denmark. (The last time a prime minister from Venstre held office close to this long was in the 1910s and 1920s.) And as of yet, according to polls, Rasmussen has nothing to fear from the center-left opposition.

Meanwhile in Sweden, whose political history is even more solidly social democratic than Denmark's, 41-year-old Fredrik Reinfeldt just led the conservative party Moderaterna to its best election result since 1928, securing a narrow victory for a center-right coalition. Sweden's economy is doing great after 12 years of social democratic leadership, but there has been growing dissatisfaction with the quality of some welfare services, such as the public health system, senior, and child care. That is, the situation is much like in Denmark in 2001. (One notable exception is that Rasmussen rode a wave of xenophobia and populist nationalism on his way to power in Denmark. Immigration issues have been remarkably absent from Sweden's national political debate in this race.)

So what is happening? How does the center-right conquer the center? For one thing, in both Denmark and Sweden, these parties have managed to form stronger and more disciplined right-wing coalitions than in previous elections. And particularly in Denmark, they also managed their media strategies more professionally and aggressively than citizens had ever seen before. But an essential part of the answer is that these parties stopped railing against the welfare state. Instead, they befriended the beast, and the electorate that loves it. Parties making up center-right coalitions in Denmark and Sweden now offer to do almost exactly what the social democrats do, only better. They promise better welfare and more individual choice, all at lower costs -- simply by managing the welfare state more efficiently. The result of this pitch, in recent years, has been to crowd out the democratic socialists from the welfare-loving center of middle-class voters.

To achieve this, right-wing liberals have had to work hard to distance themselves from the neoliberal, small-government ideas they used to preach -- ideas that evidently estranged a majority of voters. The transformation has been remarkable. Less than a decade ago, both Rasmussen and Reinfeldt fiercely criticized the welfare state in polemic books. Rasmussen laid out his political vision in Fra Socialstat til Minimalstat ("from the social state to the minimal state") in 1993 -- a small-government liberal manifesto, and a frontal attack on the prevailing welfare socialism. The very same year, in Det Sovande Folket ("the sleeping people"), Reinfeldt called the Swedes “mentally handicapped” for believing that government can secure prosperity for the people.

But today, both leaders are battling the left over the quality of welfare services for the middle class. Reinfeldt's Moderaterna proposes to spend billions of dollars more on schools and senior and child care than did the social democrats. In Denmark, Venstre exploited widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of service in public hospitals and childcare facilities, pushing remedies centered on individual choice and better service.

An obvious question is how deeply felt this political and philosophical change really is. In a recent interview with Danish newspaper Weekendavisen, Rasmussen said that the welfare model is a necessary condition for the goal of liberalism, defined as a maximization of individual freedom and self-reliance. Obviously, the term “self-reliance” can be found in any old school textbook of economic liberalism, but the introduction of the welfare state into a discourse of individual freedom does stand out as a departure from Rasmussen's ideological past.

In fact, he appears to embrace a concept of freedom long championed by some on the left (and echoed most recently in the United States by George Lakoff in his recent book, Whose Freedom?): one that is as concerned with freedom to as freedom from. From this perspective, government is not a categorical infringement on individual rights; on the contrary, government can and should expand individual freedoms by providing opportunities for citizens. Thus the accessibility of a quality education is a freedom issue, as is the availability of affordable health care, day care, paid maternity and paternity leave, etc. While Rasmussen is probably still to the right of most Danes on several specific welfare issues, he does seem to have revised his basic take-no-hostages, small-government outlook.

But clearly, Venstre's seeming transformation is also at least partly tactical. Back in 2002, commenting on Venstre's free choice policies, an influential Venstre official told a Danish labor weekly: “The center-right government was elected on an agenda to not pursue center-right policies. The moment we sell ourselves on a classical center-right profile, we won't be in office for very long. Therefore, working the attitudes of the people is one of our greatest tasks, and free choice is an important pedagogical tool in doing this.” Venstre's Minister of Employment has also repeatedly stressed the political need to tread lightly, and has accounted for the poor electoral results of previous incumbent Venstre administrations by pointing to their impatience in seeking to to reform the welfare state. In essence, his message is: their goal was correct, but the timing was wrong. People weren't properly prepared. Rasmussen echoed this sentiment in an interview last year with the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen:

Modern people will not put up with politicians coming out of a smoke-filled room, making decisions that no one has heard of before. It is a legitimate demand in a modern democracy that the people [are] involved in the process. I have never made a secret of the fact that this was the goal. And I have only been reassured that this is the right method. We are accomplishing the things we want.

Taught by bitter experience, Rasmussen's Venstre has finally abandoned its kamikaze attacks on the welfare state. Under Rasmussen's leadership, Venstre has sought to affect the political discourse more subtly, which is why Rasmussen launched a much-discussed “kulturkamp” in 2003, with no immediate political aim. This skillfully orchestrated assault on allegedly leftist media, cultural figures, and political pundits was part of a conscious attempt to change the mindset of a nation.

Thus it's a bit hard to tell whether the welfare state swallowed the center-right, or the center-right swallowed the welfare state. In the new era, allegiances and appeals have gotten jumbled. In 2000, the year before his first term as prime minister, Rasmussen boasted that analyses showed Venstre to be a greater workers' party than the Social Democrats, the traditional labor party. And for the recent Swedish elections, one slogan of Reinfeldt's Moderaterna was that “Sweden needs a new workers' party.” Perhaps it just got itself one. Or perhaps, with center-right parties slowly reforming it from the inside, the Scandinavian welfare state has a beast in its belly.

Ulrik Jørstad Gade is a history graduate student in Copenhagen, Denmark.